Panthers Name Kenny Pickett Hall of Fame Game Starter: Bryce Young Sits, Backup Race Heats Up
The Carolina Panthers made it official on Monday. Kenny Pickett will start the Hall of Fame Game against the Cardinals on Thursday night in Canton.
Head coach Dave Canales made the announcement and confirmed Bryce Young, the starter, will not see the field. Pickett and undrafted rookie Haynes King will split the reps against Arizona.
“We have a good number of guys that will be helping out early on in the game,” Canales said. “We do have practices leading into the game, and we have practices coming out of it, so I felt that with a number of guys being out there, being able to take a couple of series will really help the whole group, and we just need the football.”
This is the correct call and it should not be controversial. You do not put your franchise quarterback on the field in a preseason opener with an oddly early kickoff, weird logistics in Ohio, and nothing to gain. Bryce Young has to survive the summer with a healthy right arm. Everything else is secondary.
Pickett gets to remind everyone what he is. A former first-round pick who won a Super Bowl backing up Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia, who spent last year with the Raiders playing sparingly, and who has enough NFL reps to run an offense competently in a preseason game. He is a good QB2 on paper, and Canales is going to see how he looks in a live rep.
The more interesting name is Haynes King. He came in as an undrafted free agent out of Georgia Tech, and by all accounts had a solid summer. Getting the second half of the Hall of Fame Game against another team’s backups is a chance for him to earn a real look at the QB3 spot. Every year at least one undrafted rookie plays his way into being kept, and King is the guy fighting for it in Carolina.
Young does not need to prove anything in Canton. He needs to keep building rhythm with Adam Thielen and Xavier Legette, keep learning what Canales wants from him, and not get hurt on a bad August night. Preseason quarterback usage in the NFL has evolved to the point where you almost never see the QB1 in a first exhibition game. Almost every team runs the same play.
What Panthers fans should watch for is not the score. It is whether Pickett gives the coaching staff any reason to reconsider the depth chart if Young gets banged up during the year. And whether King shows enough to be worth a roster spot over more obvious cuts.
Bryce Young is the story of the Panthers’ season no matter what happens Thursday. He has been the story since draft night in 2023, for better and for worse. This year is the year Carolina finds out if they got that pick right.
Kenny Pickett will keep the seat warm on Thursday. Then it is Young’s team again.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
